Eamon had three names down the left side of a whiteboard and the marker still in his hand when I came up the back stairs at six a.m. He’d turned a spare bedroom into a briefing room.
LINNEA SORENSEN. DANIEL COSTA. ANNELIESE VOSS.
Michael had patched in from Seattle. He sipped coffee.
“Sorensen first,” Eamon said.
I sat with Cabot’s notes spread out in front of me. He’d written through the night in the same small, even slant I’d watched him produce at Beacon Hill, three columns now instead of two.
“Linnea Sorensen, thirty-eight,” I read. “Has worked for the Harcourts for twelve years. Husband’s a high school music teacher. Two kids.”
“Here’s Cabot’s read on her,” I said. “Maria trusts her with the catering rotation but never with the family. She’s in the service rooms only.”
“That’s the design,” Eamon said. “Maria built her people into the layer that touches the food and never crosses into Eleanor’s circle. She’s not Harcourt staff. She’s Maria’s.”
“Costa,” Eamon said.
“Fifty-four. He’s the houseman. Has worked for the Harcourts for twenty-six years.”
Michael leaned back.
“Came in under Maria when Pierce was still alive. Cabot says she trusts him with the keys. Says if any of these three is operationally compromised at her level, it’s him.”
“Family?”
“Lives alone. He has a sister in Revere that he sees on Sundays.”
“He’s not someone she recruited,” Michael said. “He’s someone she raised.”
Eamon wrote,raised. not recruitedand circled it.
“The cookies,” Michael said.
I looked up.
“Cabot mentioned Friday night that two summers ago Maria sent up cookies on a tray when he had a head cold. Costa would have brought them.”
I went back to Cabot’s page. He had it.Cookies, Vineyard, Aug 2023. Costa brought them.
“Voss,” Eamon said.
“She’s forty-two and is a catering coordinator out of Concord and Park. Nine years since the first job with the family. Cabot’s seen her at four gatherings. He says she runs the floor like a sergeant, and Maria leaves her alone.”
“Maria doesn’t leave anyone alone,” Eamon said.
Michael was already typing. “I’ll have her tax history and addresses by ten your time. Concord and Park’s books too. Their accountant is a guy named Bren Dolan in Quincy, and he also does the books for a foundation Wiley flagged on tier three in October. I couldn’t connect it to anything that mattered. Maybe I can now.”
“Push,” I said.
Eamon capped his marker.
“Federal,” he said.
I waited.
“I called,” Michael said. “It’s an old connection. He’ll receive what we have, and he won’t pre-empt on three names with thin connective tissue. He needs a device, a delivery vehicle, or a plan a magistrate will sign on without thinking twice.”
“Which means?”